Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the Next App Star competition, which will give the winning Windows Phone 8 app a way to be featured in a national Windows Phone TV commercial. Now there's word that the company has launched a new developer contest for Windows 8 apps as well.

The Windows Store developer blog has posted up word on the Windows Startup Challenge, which is designed for creators who are just starting to make Windows 8 apps. Indeed, developers don't actually submit apps themselves to be considered for the project.

Instead, app teams will submit a two minute video that shows a prototype of the app they want to make. The deadline for submitting the video is January 29th. If their project is picked, the app team will be assigned a mentor who will help guide their Windows 8 app to completion with the deadline of March 1st.

Microsoft adds:

The top 5 teams will each receive a promo package which includes banners, marketing and PR support from Microsoft. The top team will get the opportunity to launch their app to a global audience at the DEMO Mobile stage on April 17th in front of top tier seed investors, VCs, and tech press.

This sounds like a huge opportunity for teams with a cool idea for a Windows 8 app and it should be interesting to see what comes out of this new contest.